


Sweet the Sting

by icarus_chained



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Noir, Character Death, Corruption, Crimes & Criminals, F/M, Femme Fatale, Film Noir, Inheritance, Kidnapping, Kings & Queens, Loss of Innocence, Love/Hate, Murder, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 02:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2756204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He wanted me to be cruel. He got more than he bargained for. You always remember the first man you kill."</p>
<p>A dark Labyrinth City Noir AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweet the Sting

They say you always remember your first. I don't know how true that is, but I do remember mine. The first man I ever kissed. The first man I ever killed. His name was Jareth.

Maybe I remember him because in some ways he was my first everything. My first war, tracking down the gang that kidnapped my brother. My first love, the man that opened my eyes to what I wanted. My first look at life, the highs and the lows, from the fantasy to the filth. My first battle. My first victory. My first loss. He had it all, Jareth. He gave it all to me. 

It's strange, really. Everything I knew about him back then was a fantasy. None of it was real. But afterwards, everything was. Sometimes, I think it takes a lie to show us what the truth really means. Jareth was mine. And I think in a way I was his.

It started with Toby, of course. It always starts with family. Toby was my little brother. He was young, then, only barely a teenager. He was a hardheaded little idiot taking up everybody's time, demanding and arrogant and innocent as you please, happy to make people run in circles for his benefit. He figured he was immortal, the way only young boys can. He thought he could handle anything. I hated his guts, of course. I loved him, but I hated him too. That was my prerogative. He was family, and family gets to hate on family if it wants. Nobody else does.

So when they took him, my brother, and when it was my fault, when I'd sent him out there to get him out of my hair and some blasted Goblin Town gang came and took him away, I had to do something about it. Only family gets to hurt family. It was my fault, and my job. So I went to get him back. 

And down there, down in the city's dark underground, that's where I met Jareth. My Goblin King.

I didn't know who he was at first. I'd gone to one of the Goblin Town speakeasies, looking for information on my brother. I had friends down there, though not many back then. It's the one thing I've always been good at, making friends. It's why I'm as good as I am. I have friends in high places, and a whole lot more in low ones. But I wasn't so good at it then. I didn't always know the right people, or how to ask the right questions. That's why I ended up there that night. That's why I fell under his magic spell.

He was pretending to be a singer. Well. I say pretending, but he _could_ sing. Some things you can't fake. Everything else about him might have been a lie, but his voice wasn't. His voice could have made angels fall from grace for him. I guess I shouldn't be so surprised that I never stood a chance. He always knew right where to hit you so that you wouldn't see it coming.

When Jareth sang, he had a talent for making it feel like it was about you, and only you. In a room full of people, he could make you feel like the only person in the world. He sang to you across the stage lights, and you felt powerful, you felt beautiful, you felt _cruel_. The girls in his songs were always cruel. He sang it like he liked them that way. He made it sound like he was looking for the perfect hurt, and he made you feel like you could be the one to give it to him. All the power was in your hands, in those songs, and all you had to do was give him what he wanted. I listened to him that night, I met his eyes across a smoky room, and I fell for him hook, line and sinker.

Just exactly like he wanted me to.

I didn't find that out until later, of course. Not until I'd found my brother, not until I realised who had taken him. I didn't figure it out until then. Or ... maybe I did. Maybe I'd known, somewhere deep inside, that it was all just a dream, a poisoned peach someone had slipped me that night. A fantasy, the kind you're not supposed to wake from, the kind that makes it so you never want to. I think I knew that. I think I knew it all along, and until I saw him, until he made me face it, I just never wanted to admit it.

He wasn't a singer, my Jareth. He wasn't a poor boy trying to make things work, he wasn't an innocent slave looking for someone to give him that perfect hurt. He wasn't just another of Goblin Town's victims, sucked down into the dark and taught to sing it sweetly. No, oh no. Jareth was none of that.

Jareth was the Goblin King. He was the city's lord and master, from the deepest hell holes to the brightest ball rooms. There was nothing down there that could touch him, unless he wanted it to. He was the city's black, beating heart. 

And he played me like a fool.

He'd sent the goblins for my brother, knowing I'd come after him. He didn't even care about Toby, he'd just wanted me to come to him. He'd arranged that night in the speakeasy, arranged that I would see him, knowing that sooner or later I'd realise who he was. He'd set me up to love him, to be betrayed by him, to face him at the end of it. He'd taken my family, thrown me into danger. He'd coerced my friends into betraying me. He'd stripped me of my innocence and made me something harder, something more dangerous, something more cruel. He'd lured me in, he'd made me fight. He made me love him, and then he made me kill him. That was ... I can't tell you what that was. I can't tell you how much that broke me inside. But that wasn't the worst of it. It wasn't the worst thing that he'd done.

The worst of it was, he'd loved me first. The worst of it was, that was why he did it.

I don't know that he thought I'd kill him. I think he thought I'd join him. That when I was as cruel and as beautiful and as strong as he was, that I'd be with him, that I'd give him that perfect hurt and let him hurt me the same. Because he wasn't a singer. He wasn't a slave. He wasn't an innocent. But I think he wanted to be. I think I was meant to be his poisoned peach.

I'd never known him. Not before that night. But he'd known me. He'd seen me. He'd watched me trying to play it tough, watched me acting like a big shot in my little corner of the city. A beautiful girl, he told me, just waiting to be made as powerful and as cruel as she could be. And he'd _wanted_ that. Just like all his songs had said. He'd wanted me to be that thing. He wanted to be the thing that made me. So he gave me power. And he gave me a reason to be cruel. And he placed himself in front of me.

And then ... then I killed him. I took his power, I took back the child that he had stolen, and I killed him.

The fantasies you don't wake up from are the ones that kill you. There's a reason the peach is _poisoned_. I didn't know he loved me. I only knew he frightened me, I only knew he'd taken from me, I only knew I had to fight him to escape. I had power in my hand, and a brother to defend. He wanted me to hurt him. He gave me that power. I don't think he realised what that meant. I don't think he knew, when he'd never been touched, when he'd never been beaten, that power in someone else's hands can kill.

He wanted me to be cruel. He got so much more than he bargained for. He had it all, he gave it all to me, and I killed him for it. 

He would have been my slave. I know that now. He would have asked me for that perfect hurt, and he would have loved me more for giving it to him. Maybe he loved me anyway. Maybe he loved me even as I killed him. Maybe, in that moment, he understood for the first time what love really was. I know I did. I know it tore me apart inside, and maybe that's how he would have wanted it. The biggest lie and the biggest truth of all. Maybe he would have wanted me to know it hurt, and do it anyway.

He called me 'Sarah'. When I killed him. He called my name. It was the last thing he ever said.

It was the last song he ever sang. 

You always remember your first. The first kiss, the first kill. The first innocence you lose, the first you take away. The first lie that shows you the truth, the first fantasy that shows you how things really are. My first was Jareth, and his first was me.

And for that, for the power he gave the Goblin Queen and the innocence that he stole from her, he will always be remembered.

**Author's Note:**

> Jareth makes a very good femme fatale, I thought. And that's a role that rarely ends well for anyone.


End file.
